Education is always the first public spending to be cut in a crisis and the last to be restored, according to the UN Special Envoy for Global Education Gordon Brown.

But on Thursday he announced a new $1.5 billion commitment to invest in education for those children and youth most in need, powered by the game-changing International Finance Facility for Education.

The former British Prime Minister told UN News’s Ben Malor the cash injection would help get tens of thousands of students back to school – part of a wider, innovative plan to prevent whole generations of children from losing out.